Richard McLeod, director of unified communications for worldwide channels at Cisco (News - Alert), noted that to help turn the promise of unified communications into a strategic advantage, customers are demanding an enhanced set of skills and capabilities from channel partners.

The Master Unified Communications Specialization recognizes that Servion has fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support applications-based Cisco Unified Communications solutions. Shriram Rajamani, president at Servion Global Solutions, said that this certification stands testament to Servion's commitment to transforming consumer experience through consultative engagements and deep understanding of the customer and technology.

Servion is known as a collaboration specialist. Leveraging Cisco's collaboration technology, it creates and delivers world class unified communications and IP Contact Center solutions.

According to Cisco, resale channel partners first must attain the Advanced Unified Communications Specialization if they want to achieve the Master Unified Communications Specialization. Then, partners have to meet stringent requirements that demonstrate their master-level sales, technical, and services capabilities.

Moreover, Cisco expects that master specialized partners possess a number of Cisco and industry-standard technical certification requirements, provide customer references that document Cisco-prescribed design and deployment capabilities. Plus, they are also expected to show evidence that they have the infrastructure to support a full menu of Lifecycle Services offerings and capabilities.